Meet Rex Allen — Topliner Western Star (1951) 🇺🇸

Smiling Rex Allen, Republic’s crackerjack western star, is one Hollywood hombre who didn’t learn to ride at a dude ranch.

by Paul Manning

This six-foot, one-inch hunk of manhood first slung his lanky legs over a horse’s back when he was barely able to walk. The Allens of Willcox, Ariz., where Allen was born, taught their children the many things necessary to know in order to survive in the rugged west of those days.

All the elements usually found in western films were part and parcel of his life. His dad, born in Fort Chadbourne, Tex., moved to Arizona the year the State was admitted to the Union. A “homesteader”, the elder Allen suffered the same hardships and injustices at the hands of the powerful cattle barons who sought, through any device, to rid their grazing lands of these “nesters.”

When Rex was born, this war was in full bloom, if this expression could be used in this bloody battle. He soon learned the value of courage and standing for one’s rights. There is no need today for the film director to explain to Rex Allen what reactions should be felt in the many similar situations which are usually part and parcel of a western. Allen knows only too well.

His trek from Arizona to Republic Studios, Hollywood, provides an interesting and individual success story. It started with tragedy, the death of his older brother bitten by a rattlesnake. Medical aid, over 40 miles away, couldn’t be summoned in time to save the boy’s life. Embittered by this loss, the Allens moved to Willcox.

Here, Rex, prompted by his music-loving family, took up the guitar, studying via a book of instructions from the Sears Roebuck catalogue. He got to be pretty good and was soon playing at clubs and rodeos throughout the area. Later, he hit smalltime radio, and started to gather thousands of fans. His fame spreading, he was asked to audition for a top singing spot with the “National Barn Dance”, coast-to-coast program.

Liking what they heard, the sponsors signed him, and he made this his home for four years until Republic, always on the lookout for new western stars, offered him a contract, which he accepted.

Today, Rex Allen and Koko, “The Miracle Horse of the Movies”, have risen high. Numerous personal appearance tours about the nation have made additional thousands of fans. Rex Allen is the fastest rising western star, and bids fair to hit the very top of the heap before many more movie miles have sped beneath the thundering hoofs of Koko.

Republic executives find the public response to Rex’s easy charm the greatest in their wide experience with western players, and have mapped out a great future for this guy, who was literally “born in the saddle!” — P. M.

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Good Things to come from Hollywood… “David and Bathsheba”

by Paul Manning

Here is screen majesty! Brought brilliantly into the public spotlight by 20th-Fox’s tremendous advance publicity campaign, this screen milestone delivers to the fullest measure every promise of greatness.

Producer Darryl F. Zanuck and director Henry King have blended their talents to give the world one of its finest biblical films. In the dramatic department, none could ask for more striking performances than those offered by Gregory Peck, as King David, and the sensitive and demanding portrayal of Bathsheba as played by that currently zooming actress, Susan Hayward. Mounted magnificently in authenticity, and painted in superb Technicolor tones, David and Bathsheba is motion pictures at its very best. The selection of this story for filming must be considered a master’s stroke. It embraces simplicity, intrigue, fierceness, grandeur, and, above all, a great love story of biblical times. — P. M.

Gregory Peck, at left with Raymond Massey, and Susan Hayward play the title roles in the 20th-Fox Technicolor spectacle which has been smashing box office records, David and Bathsheba. Darryl F. Zanuck, lower left, produced the film, and Henry King, right, directed.

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Paramount Schedule Heavy

Hollywood — Paramount’s heavy fall production schedule was kicked off last week when shooting began on Perlberg-Seaton’s [William Perlberg | George Seaton] Somebody Loves Me, which stars Betty Hutton. Also set to go before the cameras shortly are Hal Wallis’ [Hal B. Wallis] At Sea with the Navy [Sailor Beware (1952)], the Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis comedy; This Is Dynamite [The Turning Point (1952)], starring William Holden as a racket-busting reporter; “The Goddess”, with Anna Maria Alberghetti, young Italian soprano who scored in Here Comes the Groom, and Famous [Just for You (1952)], the Bing Crosby/Jane Wyman starrer, which Pat Duggan is producing as his first assignment at Paramount.

Collection: Exhibitor Magazine (Studio Survey), October 1951